Biosphere 2

Biosphere 2 is an Earth systems science research facility. It has been owned by the University of Arizona since 2011. Its mission is to serve as a center for research, outreach, teaching and lifelong learning about Earth, its living systems, and its place in the universe. It is a 3.14-acre (1.27-hectare) structure originally built to be an artificial, materially closed ecological system in Oracle, Arizona, US by Space Biosphere Ventures, a joint venture whose principal officers were John P. Allen, inventor and Executive Director, and Margret Augustine, CEO. Constructed between 1987 and 1991, it explored the web of interactions within life systems in a structure with five areas based on biomes, and an agricultural area and human living and working space to study the interactions between humans, farming and technology with the rest of nature. It also explored the use of closed biospheres in space colonization, and allowed the study and manipulation of a biosphere without harming Earth's. The name comes from Earth's biosphere, "Biosphere 1". Project funding came primarily from the joint venture's financial partner, Ed Bass' Decisions Investment, costing US$200 million from 1985 to 2007, including land, support research greenhouses, test module, and staff facilities.^{[citation needed]}

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere 2
• Page 109 - Sides, H., 2004, Americana: Dispatches from the New Frontier: Anchor Books, New York, 450P.